Free Plugins For Sound Design

There are many great free plugins available nowadays. Here are some of the free gems that work great for creative sound design.

ALL AROUND: MeldaProduction MFreeFXBundle

One of the best free plugin packages has to be MeldaProduction’s Free Bundle – 30 free quality plugins that cover a wide range of functions. While GUI might not be everyone’s cup of tea, these are very powerful and sound great. Favourites: Wavefolder and Tremolo.

boscomac ensembles (requires Native Instruments Reaktor)

boscomac produces some of the best and unique (and free) Reaktor ensembles. There are plenty of high quality instruments and FX to choose from. Favourites: Delight Delay, Floodverb and The Reverser.

EQ: PTEq-X

PTEq-X is a digital emulation of 3 famous vintage passive program equalizers.

This Pultec EQ emulation from Ignite Amps is one of the best character EQ plugins, free or paid. Great for low and high boosts.

DELAY: Valhalla Freq Echo

Perfect for dub, Dr. Who and all of your psychedelic needs. Sonic results range from subtle chorusing and double tracking to barberpole phasing and flanging to endless glissandos and runaway echos.

Everything ValhallaDSP produces is great, and Freq Echo is no exception. Ideal for crazy stacked delays and creating movement.

BITCRUSHER: Tritik Krush

Krush is a great bitcrusher for adding grit to sounds, with filter and modulation section included.

REVERB: Teufelsberg Reverb (convo)

Teufelsberg (German for Devil’s Mountain) is a man-made hill in Berlin, Germany, in the Grunewald locality of former West Berlin. It rises about 80 metres (260 ft) above the surrounding Teltow plateau and 120.1 metres (394 ft) above the sea level, in the north of Berlin’s Grunewald Forest. It was named after the Teufelssee (i.e. Devil’s lake) in its southerly vicinity. The hill is made of rubble, and covers an under-construction Nazi military-technical college (Wehrtechnische Fakultät). During the Cold War, there was a U.S. listening station on the hill, Field Station Berlin.